Walking Against Memory

Step-and-a-Half’s lifelong walking is a response to trauma, a means of survival, and an imperfect refuge from the past.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

A Child at Wounded Knee

A Witness Survives Violence in the camp As a child, Step-and-a-Half travels with her father among Lakota people seeking shelter. The massacre at Wounded Knee kills her father and others around her. A memory too large to contain She survives by fleeing across the snow. What she sees and cannot prevent becomes the burden she will carry for the rest of her life.

Walking to Outdistance Pain

Motion as Shelter Roads without destinations Step-and-a-Half walks for miles each day, sleeping in ditches, trees, barns, or on porches. Movement gives her distance from memory. An empty space accepted The indifferent weather is easier to bear than human cruelty. Walking becomes the only way she knows to remain alive with what she remembers.

A Rescue Interrupts the Road

A Cry Stops Her A life in danger Step-and-a-Half hears a newborn cry from a privy and abandons her route. She rescues the child and brings her to Roy. Care takes another form She cannot settle permanently, but she ensures that Delphine survives. An act of care interrupts, without ending, her flight from memory.

A Shop Instead of the Road

An Arrival in Argus Gathering discarded lives Step-and-a-Half establishes a shop selling the objects and materials she collects. Her knowledge of what people discard becomes a way to make a living. A place to stop Argus gradually becomes an arrival rather than a temporary stop. The shop gives her work and a community without erasing her need to keep moving.

The Ghost Shirt Scrap

Memory Meets Rest A fragment preserved Step-and-a-Half keeps a scrap of a ghost shirt from the massacre. Its cloth reminds her that the dead are close to the living. A quieter refuge In old age she hears songs in dreams and accepts sleep beneath her patchwork quilt. Walking has not erased memory, but memory no longer requires constant flight.

During the Wounded Knee Massacre

After the massacre

The night Delphine is born

During the Depression years

Step-and-a-Half’s old age